TricTrac: Journal of World Mythology and Folklore

The purpose of Trictrac: Journal of World Mythology and Folklore I Revue de Mythologie Mondiale et deFolklore is to foster cultural and intellectual exchange at the highest level among scholars from various fields on the subjects of mythology and folklore. It is published once a year. Contributions may be either in English or French. All contributions are critically evaluated by the Editorial Board. Copyright on all published contributions is vested in the Myth Study Group and Unisa Press whose permission should be sought to reprint the articles. All articles already published somewhere else should be accompanied by the permission of the editor where the contribution was initially published. The Editor has the right to amend the wording and the punctuation of any article if necessary.

Latest Articles

JRR Tolkien's traumatic First World War experiences have been perceived as central to the literary development of his fantasy works, particularly The Lord of the Rings (1954-1956). Tolkien scholars have also provided a wider context for the effects of the First World War on his writing and a significant debate on Tolkien's place within the context of twentieth-century modernism and modernity has developed in recent years. Peter Jackson's film trilogy of The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) has provoked a discussion on the philosophy of Tolkien's experience and literary explorations of war. Central to the debate are the issues of 'relative' sacrifice and heroism embodied in Tolkien's two major narratives The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as well as the potentialities for the extension of narrative heroism offered by the recent film trilogy of The Hobbit (2012-2014).

One of the existential anxieties met in the novel The Forbidden Forest by Mircea Eliade is that of time. The characters of the novel become carriers of messages, and the place of their action becomes a real labyrinth under the division between the sacred and the profane. Ştefan Viziru's belief that historical events conceal profound spiritual significances refers to a period in the author's life, the period of his European exile, an initiation quest, an attempt to decode the lines of his destiny. Through interpreting some contemporary national events, one can discover in Mircea Eliade's novel new symbolic meanings, a philosophy of the relationship between personal destiny and the history of the Romanian people. Through the complexity of its theme and its obsessive quest for the sacred in a modern desacralized world, the novel becomes a challenge. It helps us find answers related to the meaning of human existence.

Myths in Dumitru Tsepeneag's novel : an expression of his cultural identity. The paper's aim is to follow the metamorphosis of Romanian myths, mainly the myth of Mioritza, in the novels of Dumitru Tsepeneag, a Romanian writer exiled in France after WW II. It is important to see to which extent the source culture is reflected in his writings as an expression of cultural identity through myths in their quality as transmitters of cultural significance, talking about the Romanian soul, about a simple, pastoral lifestyle. From the Romanian folklore underlining the old myths to classical literature, the pastoral myth suffered modifications, mainly in the works of writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, and Dumitru Tsepeneag is one of them. A nonconformist writer, theorist of aesthetic oneirism in Romanian literature, this author has given proof of a permanent desire of literary renewal even under a totalitarian regime which undermined all literary experience surpassing the official canon, the one of socialist realism, which Tsepeneag tried to avoid. Being a precursor of postmodernism in Romania in the 1970s, through his textualist literary texts illustrating aesthetic oneirism, Tsepeneag's creation is an expression of the nostalgia of origins - through the deconstruction of the Mioritza myth in a postmodernist manner, as a parody, constantly superposed on other myths, on differences, diversity, alterity, all discovered in exile.

The axes of the creation and birth of the imaginary as a mythical language. Our research follows the relationships of the concepts that are taking into account creation on the double axis of verticality and horizontality. We highlight those symbolic elements which would later constitute the mythical language about the sacred space-temporality. Inside this space-temporality a rich spectrum of mythical images develops; images capable of explaining the relationships of the creation plans. Without a religious perception of the temporality, the conceptualization of the axis would remain a philosophical approach. Through our point of view, the two are born simultaneously. Thanks to them, creation can be imagined. The first "frozen" formula of the mystical human spirit can be thought, brought to a palpable reality, expressed in an oral and then a written form. Studied together, temporality (sacred or not) and space are permanently imagined together. For example, a loss of mundane temporality in the secret ecstasy that offers to the soul an ascending direction does not mean getting out of universal temporality, but of its mundane section. In the sacred space the soul relates to time. Even the gods are submitted by the sacred, Aeon sometimes being synonymous to destiny. The universal creator seems to evade every touch, but not consistently, only when he avoids the descent into its created worlds. In sacredness, time and space seem or become confused, both expressing the same reality, by the immediate swing from thinking to deed. The mythical imagery conceives the displacement in the primary space-temporality by the spoken word. So, for something to appear and live, the spoken word is required. Even the divine dream appears as a pre-word of a creator's thought. The thought follows the spoken word, the spoken word follows the gestures which finally indicate the meanings of the creative act, controlling the rhythm of the creation days. These three will later be adapted through imitation in rite. We are now situated at the limit of the physical world, a real challenge for the mythical imagery. The general feature of the mythical expression on the creation of the material world is the state of the divinity's exhaustion, most often conceptualized by sacrifice or divine fatigue. The world geography identifies with the anatomy of a self-gutted god. Practically, material creation is most likely the complete revelation of God's body autopsy. As each body decomposes, everything in it is an illusion. An axial approach of the phenomenon exists in all religious systems. The created element's origin is exterior, with or without a pre-existing matter, by a god's sacrifice or only because it has to be that way. This is the starting point of the discussion on the symbolism of axiality as a reason for the constitution of the language of creation, capable of retelling the imaginary construction of myth in an oral and then written form.

Electra's myth as seen by the poets of antiquity. This paper is the first part of a larger study that depicts the transformation of Electra's myth in theatre plays, from its origins to modernity, its continuous accommodation to different epochs and mentalities, to historical contexts, aesthetical tendencies, new literary genres and subgenres and, last but not least, the author's personality. The paper focuses on Electra's myth in antique poetry and offers a general view on the tragedy, its origin and structure, elements, action and characters, with concrete examples from Aeschylus' Orestia, Sophocles' Electra and Euripides' Electra. Considering the myth as a major instance of the imagination, interesting in its syntax (formal structures) and semantics (symbolism), we underline the constant constants met in the abovementioned tragedies, e.g. revenge and redemption and other invariable elements. The transformations suffered by the myth are very well reflected by the Greek tragedies. Sophocles and Euripides get their inspiration from Aeschylus but they modify the structure of the tragedy and the tragic character of the hero. If Aeschylus insists on the power of gods over human beings, for Sophocles the human being becomes more important. Euripides' works are considered more innovative both on the level of content and construction. His characters are devoid of greatness, they are common human beings obliged to earn their living, old men and women, frightened prisoners and cowards. Thus, myth as a common source of inspiration, especially the cycle of the Atreidai, namely the episode of Clytemnestra's killing by Orestes, is to be met in the three poets' works in different interpretations. Our goal is to follow the mythical invariants met in the three tragedies (the abovementioned revenge and redemption), as well as constant elements such as recognition, choice of characters, the importance of the choir, the messenger, the judgement, etc.